Germany is planning a "data protection
prevention law" that will reduce dramatically the powers of the
country's privacy watchdogs—the German union for data protection has
warned.

It's based on the interior ministry's draft
version of a new data protection law, which the union is worried would
greatly curtail data protection in Germany.

According to Deutsche Welle,
"the bill would limit the government's own data protection
commissioners to checking that the technical prerequisites are in place
to ensure that doctors' and lawyers' files are secure, but it stops them
from following up when citizens report concerns that their data has
been leaked."

Former data protection commissioner for the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weichert, argued that the limitation of data protection controls in the medical field was "simply a disaster."

Another significant aspect of the draft law was pointed out by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. According to the proposed legislation,
firms wouldn't need to reveal what personal data they had collected if
doing so "would seriously jeopardise the business purposes of a
company."

In addition, Deutsche Welle
says the draft means the German government would deny people the basic
right to know what personal data is being collected about them if "the
release of the data endangers public safety and order, or disadvantages
the well-being of the country, or the state in another way."

The German union for data protection said this
right was the "Magna Carta of data protection," and insisted that
"arguments based on security and protection of business and business
secrets violate the fundamental constitutional right to data
protection."

Although the union was generally critical of the draft law, which aims to implement the European Union's new General Data Protection Regulation,
it did admit that it was an improvement over the previous version. If
the final legislation imposes new limits on the activity of data
protection commissioners, it could have an adverse knock-on effect
throughout the EU. Germany is generally regarded as one of the
bellwethers in this field, and its moves could be copied by other
governments.